archive.is link, if you hit a paywall: https://archive.ph/RF9jn
Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets his first national town hall with NewsNation, as the media grapples with another conspiratorial candidate. “There’s a difference between giving him a town hall and just covering his candidacy,” one network executive says.
Honestly, could we ignore him? He’s a fringe candidate with a near-zero chance of reaching nomination. What impact does he have on the race other than to act as a potential spoiler and distraction candidate?
we can, but obviously that’s not going to make much of a difference if the media doesn’t–and quite a lot of media outlets seem to be refusing to just ignore him. RFK Jr also has quite an audience already and promotes extremely harmful viewpoints, so the extent to which ignoring him is useful is, i think, debatable on some grounds. it may or may not be a good idea to let him spout anti-vaccine rhetoric unchecked.
My concern is based on what happened with Trump. The more we debated him in 2016, and the more he was criticized in the media, the more his profile grew.
Of course the media won’t do the sensible thing- Where’s the profit incentive in that?
But perhaps by being indifferent instead of outraged, we’ll not encourage them to write quite so much about him.
Trump, and I think RFK jr, appeal to anti-establishment people. When the establishment media criticize them, it validates their anti-establishment credentials.
Media like them because they’re controversial, and controversy drives engagement. I’m sure they see RFK jr as the ‘left wing’ Trump and great for the bottom line.
The one thing we can do, maybe, is to not engage. Try not to think about him.
We should have tried that with Trump.
You’ll remember that few weeks back, Joe Rogan challenged vaccine researcher Peter Hotez to debate RFK on his podcast.
When Hotez rightfully refused (I mean, what is the point of debating a pigeon), Elon Musk couldn’t resist piling on – accusing Hotez of being “scared” of debate. Cue the hooting across the bird site. (The whole thing reminded me of that scene with the apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I digress).
Anyhoo, the whole Rogan-Hotez-Musk episode, aside from being a low point in U.S. social-scientific discourse, raises all sorts of questions about how deeply one engages kookiness.
I tend to fall into the “laugh and ignore” camp because scientific truth can never be settled by who yells the loudest, and … again, pigeons … but there is a lot of room for nuance in determining the best way to combat misinformation. Particularly among populations in a position to be hurt by it. (anti-VAX nonsense and the elderly being a prime example).
I don’t think giving a platform to ignorance debunks it. The people likely to be hornswoggled aren’t going to listen to the expert.
And there’s the problem that falsehoods are quick and easy to produce but can take time and effort to debunk.
In the time it takes you to debunk one claim, the anti-vaxxer can spew a dozen more. For you to win, you need to debunk everything they say. For them to win, they just need to keep spewing garbage with no evidence until you run out of time to debunk.
I really feel as though this new age of the Internet has given rise to allowing any self important asshole with money the ability to perpetrate lies and feed the beast of propaganda. Anytime I hear someone even mention Joe Rogan I immediately know they’re going to spew some idiotic viewpoints without any significant merit as well as making it impossible to refute their viewpoint. It’s veiled intellectualism.
I don’t care if a candidate’s chances are low. The content of what he has to say is why I want to ignore him.
Hopefully if we ignore him, the media won’t amplify him quite as much.
Distraction is the purpose. Modern media has gone all in on clickbait and sensationalism leading to the rise of film and TV “star” candidates.
It’s awful.
It’s frankly been the trend of all privately-owned media to be like this, since the inception of Capitalism.